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Imbued with the grit of vintage country music and the grace of gospel, Leah Blevins' debut album is a scrapbook of sorts, a collage of feelings and memories from a decade spent working in the big city of Nashville while missing the small town she left behind. "It's a timestamp of my twenties," says the Sandy Hook, Kentucky, native. "Here are all the stories and all the experiences from that decade. Here are all the mixed emotions I've felt about things I've gone through and people I've met along the way." First Time Feeling turns tribulations into what Blevins calls "bundles of triumphs," which lend weight to her well-observed lyrics and gravity to her soulful vocals. "It's about coming into womanhood, but it's more than just a coming-of-age story. It's me discovering that I'm capable of writing a song on my own. I'm capable of staying sober. I'm capable of all these things that once felt so far out of reach. Within those walls these songs had to be unapologetically honest." The growling guitars-played by friends and co-producers Paul Cauthen and Beau Bedford-sound like wolves at the door, as Blevins introduces the themes that drive this record: the reality that we're all afraid of something, that we're all running from it even though we'll never get away from it. She summons those fears in songs that are both plainspoken and artful, which is apt for someone who considers herself a poet first, a singer second. "Back when I was seven or eight, I was just fascinated with words. Writing was always an outlet for me. It always felt like a release and a relief, almost like going to church."